


True Loves' Kiss

by zahnie



Category: Leverage
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, temporary paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4487661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zahnie/pseuds/zahnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot wakes up to find he can't move and he's listening to someone he doesn't know give a eulogy for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Loves' Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after The Gone Fishin' Job (3x07) but before The Grave Danger Job (4x07).
> 
> My first Leverage fic!

Eliot wakes up.

He can’t open his eyes or move. It’s probably just sleep paralysis; he’s had that after nightmares before. If he relaxes, it should pass.

But it doesn’t.

Eliot isn’t in the hospital. He’s wearing shoes. Uncomfortable shoes, pinching his toes like they’re new. And the air doesn’t smell like hospitals. It smells like cedar and grass and… freshly turned earth.

Someone is talking nearby, a voice he doesn’t recognize. Eliot strains to hear what they’re saying.

“…gathered here today to mourn the passing of Eliot Spencer.”

He’s in a coffin. At his own funeral.

Eliot loses track of the words then, loses everything to fear and panic. If he’s here, what happened to the team? Did he actually _die_?

No. He can feel his heart beating under his folded hands.

Eliot works on remembering what happened. They were doing a job. He’d been sent to do recon. The mark was a pharmaceutical CEO who’d covered up deadly side effects in a new drug. They’d done this kind of job before. Hardison had been…

He winces at the memory of Hardison saying, “We could take these guys down in our _sleep_ , man.”

Eliot had gained entry to the building no problem. Most of the security guys were ex-CIA but they hadn’t looked at him twice. He knew all the tricks for that by now: adjust his walking pace to seem more civilian, some eye contact but not too much, a trace of hesitation in his voice. But he couldn’t remember what had happened after he left the lobby.

Someone says his name, a female voice. He listens.

“Eliot was a good man. He was a good brother, a good son, but most of all, he was a good man. I’ll miss him every day.”

He doesn’t know her.

“When we were kids… he’d always let me play even when he could have left me behind.” Her voice breaks on the last word and she is crying.

Eliot is glad whoever has done this to him hadn’t found his real sister and her family. The next voice he hears makes him feel relieved and afraid at the same time.

“Is this real? It’s not like Sophie before?” It’s Parker. Her voice is so small that she must be right next to Eliot for him to be able to hear her.

“Baby, I think it’s real.” Hardison. They’re both here.

He’s glad they’re safe but this feels like a trap and he wishes they were both far away.

He can smell Hardison. There’s less light above him.

He hears Hardison whisper, “For morale.” And then Hardison is kissing him.

It’s nothing like Eliot had imagined, when he’d let himself imagine their first kiss. Hardison’s lips are soft and his touch is so light that Eliot wants more. He tries to kiss back, forgetting about the paralysis, the situation, the danger.

Hardison pulls away and the light shining on Eliot’s closed eyes is back.

“Eliot?” Hardison gasps.

“What? What happened?” Parker is whispering urgently.

“He- he’s warm. And I think he moved.” Hardison’s whisper is full of wonder.

“Let me try,” Parker says and now she’s kissing Eliot. Her kiss is more forceful, harder. He’d thought it would be; if they ever could get to this point, he’d known it would be because Parker was sure of him. He tries to kiss her back too, encouraged that Hardison thought he’d moved.

She leans back and Eliot can feel his heart beating faster.

“Yep, he’s definitely alive.” Parker’s voice is much too loud.

Hardison says, “Uh oh.”

Eliot wants to explode into motion to protect them but he still can’t move.

“How _dare_ you hurt our Eliot!” Parker yells. He hears the distinctive crackle of her taser and somebody yelps. Hardison grunts, like he does when he punches someone.

People are yelling. Someone bumps into his casket, pushing it askew. Eliot feels his left pinky twitch. The paralytic is wearing off. With an enormous effort, he opens his eyes.

Above him, the blue sky is endless. Then, Nate is there, grinning. “And now we’re going to steal an Eliot.”

 

***

It takes Nate, Sophie, and Hardison to lift Eliot out of the casket and carry him across the graveyard. Parker covers them with her trusty taser, laughing with delight the whole way.

“How did you figure out he was alive?” Sophie pants.

“He was warm,” Hardison says.

Sophie makes her outraged noise. “You never touched _me_ when I was dead!”

“I knew you weren’t actually dead!” Hardison snaps back.

“That’s enough,” wheezes Nate, “Argue later.”

They are quiet until they reach Lucille. The van is crowded with four of them in the back. Sophie sighs when Parker starts the engine but doesn’t complain. They prop Eliot up against the wall but Hardison has to hold onto him to keep him from falling. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” Hardison whispers in his ear, as Parker’s enthusiastic driving pushes them together.

Eliot smiles at him. It doesn’t feel quite right on his face, but Hardison is smiling back and that’s what matters.

 

***

Parker and Hardison take Eliot back to Hardison’s place. Nate says something about discussing what happened but Sophie pulls him away.

After they’re gone, Eliot is lying on the couch with his head in Hardison’s lap and Parker sitting under his legs. Hardison gently touches his hair, almost too softly for Eliot to feel it.

“Do you need anything?” Parker asks.

Eliot mumbles “No” through his unresponsive lips.

“You scared the hell out of us,” Hardison says.

“You were missing for 27 hours,” Parker says. She’s pulling off the uncomfortable shoes. “We looked everywhere.”

“One minute, you were on comms, chatting up the tenth floor receptionist, and then bam. Comm was dead.” Hardison touches his hair again, like he’s making sure Eliot is real. “I found the funeral appointment in the graveyard’s calendar half an hour before it started.”

Eliot wants to ask questions, make sure they’re safe. Walk around and check the windows and the security system. Hardison sometimes forgets to turn it on when he’s upset.

“It was like that story,” Parker says suddenly. “With the dragon and the apples.”

Eliot can see Hardison staring at Parker. Hardison doesn’t get it but Eliot is getting better at following Parker’s trains of thought. “Not a princess,” he growls.

Hardison laughs. “Two separate stories, baby, but yeah. We woke him with a kiss, didn’t we?”

Eliot can hear Parker’s grin when she says, “Yes! And now we’ll all live happily ever after.”

“Yeah,” says Hardison softly, looking into Eliot’s eyes. “Yeah.”

 

***

It takes a few hours but Eliot can move again. He still doesn’t remember how they caught him or anything from the time he was missing.

Hardison tells him not to worry about it. “We can deal with anything they throw at us.”

Eliot almost says that overconfidence got them into this in the first place but he decides not to. Hardison is just trying to make him feel better. He only sat on the couch with Eliot and Parker for ten minutes before he’d stood up to do more online research and erase any electronic trace of Eliot’s funeral.

Parker sits on the counter, swinging her legs and watching Eliot stretch. She’d gone to his place to grab clothes for him as soon as he could put them on himself. The funeral suit was folded up next to her. Eliot would love to destroy it with fire but it could be a clue.

“Are you hurt?” she asks.

“Don’t think so,” he says. He’d found puncture marks on his arms from where the needles went in and he is starving but that seems to be it.

“Good,” Parker says.

Suddenly, she’s standing right beside him. “Don’t die anymore,” Parker says, solemnly.

Eliot straightens up. “I’ll try not to,” he says, keeping his tone light.

Parker pauses for a long minute. Eliot doesn’t move.

At last, she says, “We need you. Don’t die.” She throws her arms around his neck.

Eliot hugs her back.

Then Hardison is hugging both of them. “Me too,” he says.

“Me three,” Eliot whispers.


End file.
